It is almost five a.m.
With each thump of the echoing bass,
of the synthetic revenge and heartbreak,
angry percussion wraps me closer than your arms ever could--
tremulous and heavy,
more absolute than the sunset fictions
you contentedly let me cling to.
A venomous chorus drips from my lips,
once-swollen eyes now itchy and dry.

This is the still serenity of the predawn slumber,
the yearning of the yetsummer,
the quiet before the birds begin scavenging
through grass, trash, and recycling.
I protest--
tongue, fingers heels teeth and lungs
restless in spite of themselves.

You have chased me out of bed,
across dew-dampened grass,
over uneven pavement as treacherous as your voice.
You follow me.

Sleep is merely a forlorn memory
peering sadly from a forgotten heap of warm cotton thread,
whimpering futilely against the anxious pulsing
of overworked headphones
and overthought peculiarities.

You introduced me to this time of day.
You summoned it once with impatient chords
and a staccato keystroke melody,
casually ignoring the plaintive honesty
I willingly accompanied you with.

But the sunrise casts a strange glow, I guess--
rosy and well-intentioned,
fickle and fleeting, like your grin
or the capricious depth of the summer sky.

No one remembers that wandering blue
the same color as her eyes;
but it seeps through your pores,
curls into the caverns of your chest,
an aching in azure only because you let it.
You have bathed too long in the sun.
As the scarlet sunrise erupts across your shoulders
the sky settles into your lungs.

But don’t trust that sky,
that constant companion.

That sky is a cannibal
and it will eat you alive.

The evenings cold enough to require a sweater
but still too warm for the biting winter wind,
to cut through our clothing
like hot knives through butter;
these are the not-quite nights,
the dusks of the almost-autumn
and the too-late summer,
with the drizzle dripping requiems
for sunshine longings and July dreams.

These are the nights that I am torn
between walking alone with the chill in my bones,
sedate with the cold but alive,
or begging for a body
to drift alongside,
radiating an unreciprocated warmth;
someone with hands stuffed
into night-bitten pockets,
too cool and stiff to really chatter
but hoping for the shared sympathy
of frozen, rain-speckled skin.

We are gliding across the fallen leaves--
the dying brethren of the trees--
that crackle slow beneath our feet
like summer candy wrappers, drifting.
But we’re still slowly freezing,
shrugging threadbare shoulders
under threadworn sweaters
that still reek of the past.
And we’re still gently waltzing,
disinterested fingers on uninteresting waists
trampling scarlets and golds under
careless heels in three-four beats.

As the twilight fades into ink,
a hollow, whispering breeze reminds
of the clouded distance between us
and the heavy, rain-laden sky.

I sat outside for hours last night.
I sat outside under the same July stars
twinkling new under an icy, November moon,
shoulders still bare and hair tied back,
looking for the misplaced summer in an anxious fall.

I didn't find it.
I found cigarette ashes clinging to the fur of my boots.
I found crystalline fog glazed cold to my skin.
I drew childish hearts and arrows in the ghost of my breath
and traced glassy teardrops clinging to sweatshirt sleeves.

I sat outside for hours last night
until even my lungs stiffened with the cold.
My clavicles stung with the prickling of snow
and my fingertips ached with the effort of clinging--
to grass, to wood, to paper, to smoke,
to snowflakes falling through liquid-like air,
to memories, to monsters,
to you and to me.

But I couldn't hold us.
We slipped like water through my clutching hands;
we melted like rocks that never even were.
We dripped, trickled, and fell like rain,
and we evaporated in the blaze
of an ending Indian summer.

I sat outside for hours last night
listening for lost crickets hiding sadly under leaves.
They buried themselves too well for me,
better than you ever will, it seems.
You float, always just under the surface of an endless, salty sea
no matter how much concrete
I pour for your shoes.
You never leave.

But I sat outside for hours last night
perfectly alone.

Breathe.

Inhale deep.
Let the afternoon sink
into your tired lungs
on golden wings of daylight
and ease.

Breathe.

Exhale slow.
Let oxygen, nitrogen,
carbon dioxide and pollution
whisper from your bloodstream
and mingle with the trees.

Purify.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Breathe.

Count to five (for me).

One:
stretch each muscle of your fingertips--
first knuckle,
second knuckle,
third.

Two:
curl your toes inside your shoes;
feel your socks stretch
inch by
inch.

Three:
spell your name until it sticks;
seven letters raindance
just to comfort
you.

Four:
Tell me where you live,
how the squeak-springed couch sinks
under the weight of family
and love.

Five:
close for me your tired eyes;
shifting patterns of stars wrap your dark
in brightness
and calm.

Then breathe.
Inhale deep and exhale slow.
Untie the knots from your shoulders,
and open the cage to your chest.

Breathe.